News

1. Measure A, the Alameda schools parcel tax, won with 68.4 percent of the vote yesterday, surpassing the two-thirds needed for passage, according to the Alameda County Registrar of Voters. The parcel tax would replace an existing one that is set to expire. The tax is expected to raise up to $12 million a year for the cash-strapped school district.

2. Oakland’s population declined by 2.2 percent during the last decade, dropping from 399,484 to 390,724, according to the newest US Census data, the CoCo Times reports. Previous Census figures showed that the city’s population decline began in the early part of the decade and it apparently continued. Oakland was hit hard by the foreclosure crisis and has been rocked by high unemployment.

3. Asians and Latinos, meanwhile, experienced large population gains around the state, the Chron reports. The Asian-American population surged by 31.5 percent, while the number of Latinos increased by 27.8 percent. The white population grew by just 6.4 percent, and blacks, only 1.6 percent.

4. Two Oakland cops who shot and killed an unarmed barber will not be charged with any crimes, the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office said yesterday, according to the Trib. Prosecutors concluded that the officers, Eriberto Perez-Angeles and Omar Daza-Quiroz, broke no laws when they fatally shot Derrick Jones last fall. The cops said they thought Jones was reaching for a gun in his waistband but it turned out to be a small scale used for measuring marijuana.

7. And the number of great white sharks off the California coast is much smaller than experts thought, the Chron reports, citing the first-ever census of the species. Scientists believe there are only 219 adult or near adult great whites roaming the waters from Bodega Bay to Monterey.